The Anthropology of Toxicity

Last weekend, three of us hopped in a Lyft and drove to Galena Park, a 25 minute trip that took us from one side of Houston’s skyline to the other. We met Juan Flores at a Dairy Queen in the middle of the town, from which he offered to drive us around to multiple sites where toxicity was profoundly visible in his community. The first place to which he took us was the dredging site for the Houston Ship Channel–in other words, the empty piece of land in Galena Park where tons of sand, and toxins with it, is scooped out of the Ship Channel and dumped every year. Juan told us stories of how he would play in the sand with his friends as a child, long before becoming an environmentalist or city councilman, without a single thought about what the water that turned some of the sand into quicksand might contain within it. He then drove us to Santa Anna park, the park located right on the Ship Channel containing a plaque commemorating the capture of Santa Anna. Right on the water, like Juan told us there would be, were around a dozen people fishing in the incredibly polluted water of the Ship Channel. I thought of toxic buildup–how the fish had more toxins concentrated in their bodies than the water did, and what those people were burdening their own bodies with–perhaps knowingly, perhaps unknowingly.

This was my first experience with filmmaking, and I was surprised–although I probably shouldn’t have been–by how difficult it is to gain the same level of raw conversation on camera as it is in person. I was also struck by the challenge of gaining a wide enough variety of shots–how much moving around and angling has to be done in order to compile footage that makes for an interesting film. (I was very lucky to have a group far more well-versed in filmmaking than I am, because I doubt I would have thought to film so many different things from different perspectives!)

In addition to my filmmaking revelations, I was struck by how all-consuming toxicity is. It causes childhood cancer, but it is also the livelihood of thousands of residents who work in refineries. It leads to far above average rates of asthma, but the city relies on its one refinery that Houston didn’t gerrymander out of their community for its tax revenue. The Ship Channel poisons the fish, but it also provides the sand where the community goes to watch fireworks on the Fourth of July. How does a community fight something that is simultaneously its death and its means of survival? How can you bargain with an institution that knows you rely on it?